San Francisco sees baby boom

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May 16, 2009Small Frys children's clothing store in Noe Valley, San Francisco, Calif. has a variety of clothing including novelty onesies. There is a resurgence of larger families in San Francisco. (Paul Myers/ Mercury News)

May 16, 2009Eric Olson, an employee at Small Frys children's clothing store in Noe Valley, San Francisco, Calif. fits Jill Smith for a baby sling while her friend Thais Sholley looks on. There is a resurgence of larger families in San Francisco. (Paul Myers/ Mercury News)

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May 16, 2009Elizabeth and Eric Hill with their daughter Olivia, relax on 24th Avenue in Noe Valley on Saturday, May 16, 2009. There is a resurgence of larger families in San Francisco. (Paul Myers/ Mercury News)

May 16, 2009Elizabeth and Eric Hill with their daughter Olivia, relax on 24th Avenue in Noe Valley and are greeted by Rosemary Brinson, left, on Saturday, May 16, 2009. There is a resurgence of larger families in San Francisco. (Paul Myers/ Mercury News)

May 16, 2009A view of 24th Avenue at Castro in Noe Valley on Saturday, May 16, 2009. There is a resurgence of larger families in San Francisco. (Paul Myers/ Mercury News)

May 16, 2009Lourdes Martinez leaves Small Frys, a children's clothing store in Noe Valley, San Francisco, Calif. There is a resurgence of larger families in San Francisco. (Paul Myers/ Mercury News)

Along 24th Street in Noe Valley, the BabyBjorn carriers are out in force.

In this predominantly white enclave of San Francisco that some locals quip should be dubbed, “Strollerville,” parents walk past upscale shops with infants snuggled in the fashionable Swedish chest carriers.

Mayor Gavin Newsom and his wife are hardly the only pregnant couple in a city suddenly threatening to belie that staple of Bay Area cocktail party statistics: “There are more dogs than children in San Francisco.”

Births in the 94114 Zip code, which includes Noe Valley and the Castro, the historical center for San Francisco gay life, were about 50 percent higher in 2007 than in the mid-1990s.

Urban enclaves like Noe Valley and the Castro may sound like unlikely places for a baby boom. But they are at the vanguard of a national urban trend that, according to U.S. Census estimates, has given San Francisco its biggest brood of young children since the early 1970s.

“All you have to do is stand out there for five minutes and you’ll see a stroller,” said Carol Yenne, the owner of Small Frys, a specialty clothing store for young children in Noe Valley.

“There has been a demographic boom in the gay community having kids,” said San Francisco Supervisor Bevan Dufty, a gay man raising his 21/2-year-old daughter with a lesbian partner.

San Francisco has seen a 24 percent jump in its under-5 population since 2000, recent census data shows. Three-quarters of the increase was among whites. But even cities like Portland, whereas in San Francisco, local officials were wringing their hands a few years ago about the lack of children, are seeing a surge in children.

San Jose, where the child population has been flat since 2000, is a notable exception.

“I think there is a new generation of white, well-off parents who want to stay in the city, in high-amenity cities like San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., and Portland,” said Bill Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution. “They are willing to pay for private schools and child-safe neighborhoods in order to do this. It’s a trend that wasn’t apparent for the baby boomers, who left for the suburbs when they started having kids.”

While San Francisco has had perhaps the most dramatic kid increase relative to its overall growth, the number of infants, toddlers and young children is growing faster than the overall population in most big cities.

That doesn’t necessarily mean big cities are poised to reverse the pattern of post World War II America, where young middle-class parents moved to the suburbs to raise their children.

“This is not a trend that’s going to sweep the country,” Frey said. “It’s going to sweep pockets of wealth and privilege and upper middle-class lifestyles.”

But in San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and even Manhattan, all cities where officials worried a few years ago about the dwindling number of children, white families are fueling increases in the child population.

Keeping kids in the city “is one of our points of obsession,” said Portland Mayor Sam Adams, where the young child population is up 10 percent since 2000.

The city has seen an influx of highly educated professionals, a “creative class,” Adams said. “Like Seattle and San Francisco and the Bay Area, they care a lot about the sustainability and quality of life. That has attracted a lot of the younger, creative types who now are of childbearing age.”

Relative to other big cities, children remain a relatively small share of the population in San Francisco. But the city topped 9,000 births in 2007 for the first time since 1994, and the San Francisco Unified School District received 500 more applications for kindergarten spots this year than last, the second year kindergarten applications surged.﻿﻿

Petyr Kane owns Citizen Clothing, selling men’s clothing on Castro Street for nearly 20 years. About three years ago, he noted all the strollers in the gay hub and saw a business opportunity — baby clothes.

It’s been so successful he has reorganized his stock, making sure there is room for strollers.

In the Castro, “it’s something we never would have thought about 20 years ago — making room for parents and strollers to come in,” Kane said.

Whether San Francisco’s child population will continue to grow when the current crop of infants and toddlers hits school age is unclear. Just ask Stephen Statler, a videographer watching his 3-year-old son playing in a Noe Valley park on a blustery spring day, as fog spilled over Twin Peaks.

Faced with high housing costs, tired of the city’s cold summers and less than enthusiastic about its public schools, he and his wife are moving to the suburbs.

“You start in the Mission,” Statler said, referring to the more gritty neighborhood down the hill from Noe Valley. “Then, you get married and you move to Noe Valley” and have children, “and then you move to the suburbs.”

Some, like Yenne, say children are back for good in San Francisco. With private commuter buses from Google and other Silicon Valley companies cruising Noe Valley to pick up tech workers each morning, Yenne says the tradition of working in a city and raising kids in the suburbs has flipped for some.

“When we first moved to Noe Valley, there were lots of baby-sitters, and no playmates.”

"I fully support the principles behind Senate Bill 1: to defeat efforts by the president and Congress to undermine vital federal protections that protect clean air, clean water and endangered species," Newsom said in a written statement.